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Some good shiiit.
I'm still amazed that more people don't get food poisoning.
How many times I've seen down time during service and cooks prepping raw chicken to go right back to service and plating.
My favorite was a real hands-on owner that would move/replace the rubber mats in the toilets and then come back into kitchen and "help." Or the guys that love to wear the plasti gloves all day and take out trash and come right back to working... flippin' amazing.
I eat at restaurants without any issue, but I will NOT eat food at any place I'm working at unless I made it. A good case of "what you don't know..."

Cowboy is a term used a lot to describe "not so good chefs" in UK and Australia. Most of the replies and OP are from those countries listed. Equivalent off that term in US would be "shoemaker" or "zapatero" depending on your crew

I worked at a 'fine dining' French restaurant in California very, very briefly that was ran by some complete crooks. Some of their practices were straight illegal but it was a gold mine of beautiful shoemaking.

All of their purees - which were more like large, dry bricks that you'd pick up in a pan and make stupid looking football size quenelles w/ hatchmarks - were kept for weeks

Frozen veal bones were always broken apart on a sheet tray in the dish floor with a hammer by the dishwasher... Lot of floor spice there

On 'busy' weekend nights, the Chef himself would sandbag 10-20 orders of the two pasta dishes a night... just letting them sit in lukewarm sauce for hours. Delicious.

Everything was stored in XL ziploc bags. Everything. All veg, all proteins, even mussels. So everything also had a nice pool of liquid it was constantly submerged in.... which also doubles as veg stock in some situations.

During service I was told to cook/re-heat 90% of the veg by putting it on a cold plate and letting it ride in the 500 degree oven for a few minutes.... ***

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Beyond that, the worst thing I've probably seen was at a barbecue restaurant here in NC. We cooked whole (or half) hogs and during the summer one of them got left in the refrigerated van all day while it was off. As you can imagine, being left to slowly sit in some sticky 100+ degree heat for hours, the thing was all shriveled and stunk to f-ing high heaven. At the end of the night, the cook in charge of the pits brings the damn thing in the kitchen and throws it on the prep table like he's about to put it on. I ask him plainly *** he thinks he's doing and he goes, "no, it's okay guey" and proceeds to pour a pitcher of hot water on the hog... which instead of washing the smell off, intensifies the smell 10x. To this day, probably the worst thing I've ever smelled in the kitchen.

"no, it's okay guey""
It reminded me my old saute cook , who we called Mr.Gepetto since he was the master of shoemaking. When I walked in the kitchen (he was a lunch cook) the smell of burnt garlic would confirm : yep , Walter is working today...